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Decline Sawyer, Pillars and the balance meme - some thoughts

luj1

You're all shills
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1) Contrary to the popular meme, there really was no build balance in the original. Godlike Druids/Chanters/Priests/Ciphers and Orlan Fighters are God-tier compared to Dwarf Rogues or Elf Monks (wild example) or whatever else. In fact, it was a very unbalanced and fun game purely from a perspective of class and race balance. You can do some pretty crazy stuff with a solo Fire Priest or a party of Moon Barbarians. The whole balance thing was not about intra-class balance, but more about capping the player via meager stat growth, denying EXP, etc.

2) Sawyer's sin was not so much striving for perfect balance as everybody likes to say, but the desire to please everybody and streamline gameplay. Most notably this was done via per-encounter abilities and Endurance, which were supposed to ensure "smooth" gameplay; and Fargo did the same thing with Effort in Tides of Numenera, butchering character development in the process.

Conclusion: the meme should be about accessibility rather than balance.
 
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Lilura

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balanced.jpg
 

luj1

You're all shills
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Balance in a singleplayer game is asinine and stupid.

Yup and pursuing it is pretty pointless. Like, I'm not saying a game should be obscenely imbalanced... but half the fun comes from some things being more powerful than others and finding these things. Fun is *way* more important than striving for perfect or near-perfect balance.

In any case, I dunno how bad Sawyer wanted class and race balance but it obviously didn't work out (and thank God it didn't).
 
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Lilura

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but half the fun comes from some things being more powerful than others and finding these things.

For me, it's about 90% of the fun. However, Swordflight showed me that strict balance of itemization and power-growth can still be enjoyable and rewarding. I didn't know that was possible, pre-Swordflight.
 

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